The U.S. military said Tuesday that a Chinese fighter jet flew aggressively close to a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea, forcing the American pilot to fly through the turbulent wake.
The Chinese J-16 fighter pilot “flew directly in front of the nose of the RC-135,” which was conducting routine operations in international airspace last Friday, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. It called the Chinese move an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver.”
"The bigger issue is that China doesn't like the United States conducting what's known as close-in surveillance, where U.S. ships and aircraft will operate right up to the edge of what the United States thinks is the legal limit, which is pretty close to China. But China's view is that U.S. ships and aircraft should be far away from the Chinese coast because this is provocative and unfriendly," said Denny Roy, the East-West Center’s Asia-Pacific security expert.
"So the Chinese have been pushing back in the usual way, which is intimidating, maneuvering. We see the Chinese treat other countries the same way. Chinese ships, for example, will collide with and sometimes sink Vietnamese ships in seas that are disputed between the two countries," Roy added.
In a further sign of the tensions, China said its defense chief will not meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin when the two men attend a security conference in Singapore this coming weekend. Austin is scheduled to address the Shangri-La Dialogue on Saturday, while Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Li Shangfu will speak at the gathering on Sunday.
"China has arrived at a point where the Chinese government is insisting that China be treated as a great power, not using those terms necessarily, but the Chinese have told the United States, you need to take Chinese interests into due account," Roy told HPR.
This interview aired on The Conversation on May 31, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press contributed to this report.
